


Now, Upwards Rose the Flame

by irregular



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post Reichenbach, case!fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irregular/pseuds/irregular
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Reichenbach. The road to recovery is a long one, mired with complications so fervent in their desire to tip one from their re-ascent to the top that it's a precarious pilgrimage. Undeterred, John begins it alone. As usual, he's never left to his own devices for long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_If you’re just tuning in, you’re listening to Radio One with Chris Moyles. The time is 8:03 on this drizzly May morning and here’s Dominic with the news and sports:_

_Thank you very much! Like his career, it’s been buzzing around the blogosphere, but it’s been confirmed this morning that Internet sensation Sherlock Holmes has indeed passed away. The self-proclaimed Consulting Detective recently came under fire due to claims that his success was nothing more than a façade, leading police to believe that his apparent leap from St Bart’s Hospital in London was suicide. Police say—_

The fricative rasp that hisses in protest from the radio is ineffectual to the hand that slams upon it. A heavy palm catches the power button and the spiel—the tedious repetition of false condolences beneath the shivering excitement of rumour—fizzles away into the sharp morning air.

Inside 221b Baker Street, not much has changed. The kitchen exists in the same state of organised disarray that’s become characteristic of the flat—has been since one half of the tenants had first laid eyes upon it—and the sight is almost repugnant to behold. A half-constructed chemistry set (empty beakers and stagnant Bunsen Burners, mostly) is perched upon the table with as much audacity as though it had always meant to be there, as opposed to the cheerful display of domesticity that, say, a vase of plastic flowers might.

The mere prospect of it—domesticity: dull and placid and utterly boring—entirely warrants the violent extraction of two tea bags from the appropriate pot – or so the perpetrator insists. 

He reaches out and fiddles with the dials of the radio. There’s a characteristically ear-piercing orchestra of feedback before the familiar crescendo of a song coming to its end trips upon the radio waves. He returns to the fine art of brewing a cuppa. 

_—Paloma Faith’s new single, from her new album, “Fall to Grace”, which hits the shops next Monday. We’ve got a bit of Take That coming up for you in just a sec, but first, here’s Moira Stuart with the news._

_Thanks, Chris. Our top story today: St Bart’s Hospital was in uproar yesterday afternoon after reports came of an apparent suicide from their roof and we can confirm for you now that the deceased was indeed a Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the disgraced Internet detective—_

The voice crackles and fizzes and dissipates along the slight breeze that forces entry from the narrow window above the sink. Shafts of the bright morning light dapple the surface upon which the radio sits, sulking in its forced silence, and the tea is poured. It fills the silence with its easy familiarity. It’s a simple routine—nothing too taxing for arse o’ clock in the morning, in spite of his habitual early rising—and, between the musical tinkle of metal against porcelain and the swirling vortex of milky tea, he manages to escape.

John picks up both cups and it’s not until he reaches the living room that he realises his mistake.

He stands there for a moment, staring at the horrendously bright and cheerful face that describes those bullet holes in the wall, eyeing the damn thing as though it’s dealt him a personal wrong. It has, in a way, because why the hell does it have any right to be there? It’s obnoxious and it demands his attention and John very much wants to punch that smug smile, regardless of the entirely logical conclusion for which his knuckles will suffer all the more for.

It’s the rational train of thought, John reflects, one that _he_ , the selfish wanker, might have spared an ingratiating, albeit utterly patronising, quirk of the lips for. 

He compromises by throwing the spare tea-cup at the graffiti. 

After that, John sits calmly on the sofa, back ramrod straight, and sips his own tea. His gaze is turned stoically away from his drink’s twin, the contents of which currently trickle down the peeling wallpaper that encircles the bullet holes. They look remarkably like tears, as though the flat itself has taken it upon itself to quantify John’s reaction where the man himself can’t. He lets the tea scald his lips as he blinks back his own.

Inside 221b Baker Street, not much has changed but the inconsolable void that a genius once occupied.

* * *

At ground level, the air possesses the sort of bite that John reflects is surely residual from the winter that London has yet to quite escape from. Consequently, a scarf isn’t out of place, not when the rain comes down in torrential sheets and the horrendous wind warrants any brave wrestle with an umbrella not something to turn one’s nose up at. There’s an almost snide air to the wind that makes him wonder whether he’s being mocked.

When he ducks into Baker Street station, John’s fingers are numb to the tips. They’re ineffectual, at first, grappling for an Oyster card. He fancies that the last gust of a breeze that follows him past the ticket barriers and never quite leaves him even as he descends into the cavernous pit below. On the escalator, John flexes his fingers and reflects that the distant rumble of trains is horribly ominous.

118 metres below sea level, however, and the climate was another matter entirely. Its sticky and close; he winds his scarf back from around his neck with a quick expulsion of breath - frustrated. While he manages to find a seat, the rare achievement does little to buoy his spirits; the train rattles his bones right to the core.

Once upon a time, John found the tube rides that peppered his exploration of London soothing. The persistent rocking, at least when one can actually perch their arse on something vaguely comfortable, maintains a rhythmic pendulum even now; a pattern that, once placating in its predictability (if one knows where to look), is now almost repugnant.

He’s done with searching for patterns in the threads of his life. John craves a chronic lack of predictability: he wants _Sturm und Drang_ ; he needs chaos and dissent, because it’s the only thing that can’t be explained, not really. Not like the woman sitting across from him. 

She’s dressed to impress, at least at first glance, because John knows that skirt isn’t merely one that can be swiped from the sale rack at M&S. It’s a rich black, the undiluted sort that the high street could never manage (John ceases in his relentless evisceration of the woman’s attire to ponder the precise moment at which he became so cynical), and tapered neatly at the knees. That’s where her facade disintegrates. 

There’s a ladder in the material, just above where the hem skims the upper end of her shins. It’s high enough to be shrouded from view, for the most part, but she’s careless: in the short, eastbound hurtle towards Great Portland Street station, she’s dropped the magazine, wobbling precariously in her lap, no less than three times. In the scramble to rescue the banal gossip rag from the sticky floor, up hitches her skirt and John is treated to a generous helping of her right thigh, along with the damn ladder that’s been glaring at him ever since. 

The smug swell that billows in his chest and then promptly threatens to spill out onto the curve of his lips is startling, at first. It’s a small victory, discerning then that her foundation is just a shade too dark for her skin-tone to be expensive and this woman is no more City than he is, but once the proverbial dam had been relinquished, John finds himself caught up in the wave. 

A teenaged couple: seemingly head-over-heels in-love (he feels a brief pang of jealousy), if the state of their excessively public display of affection is anything to go by. From the angle of the girl’s neck and the amount of pressure exerted by the boy’s fingertips, John ascertains that the latter is entirely aware that she has cheated on him. 

An elderly gentleman: military. Come on: it’s too easy. He doesn’t wear a uniform and his utter lack of hair prohibits the judgement being made from his hair-cut, but his posture ignites the same degree of pride in Watson that would burn brightly whenever his own military connections were made all the more evident. It’s strong and indomitable, even when old bones ought to have coiled, concave, beneath the pressure of arthritis and exhaustion. John’s suspicion is confirmed when a look of brief understanding passes between them: like souls fleetingly fused. 

It’s not until he assesses the state of a middle-aged couple’s marriage—German tourists, from what he can gleam from the sparse conversation that rattles icily between them—that John realises what he’s doing. The revelation is terrifying. 

He wonders if he felt like this, even in spite of the proclaimed egotism to his gratuitous presentations of logic, but even that makes his chest constrict in a manner that has little to do with the creeping heat of the Underground. What starts as a dull thud in his gut permeates the rest of his vital organs, until John feels quite sick to the core. He feels the sharp prick of tears at the backs of his eyes again, a shameful addition that he had managed to eradicate a mere hour beforehand. His knuckles are rough as he scrubs them away. 

John lasts another stop before escaping at Euston Square. He trips on the way off, procuring a sarcastic _“Mind the gap”_ from the woman whom he almost knocks clean over, and flees the station. The mundane, daily lives of those around him rings through his ears and doesn’t stop until he’s out in the bitter air once more, heaving in the breeze.

* * *

In the end, John takes the taxi. 

It’s a slow crawl through London and one that he, like any seasoned Londoner, had anticipated, but the thought of battling through the cloying thoughts of those on the Tube is horrendous even to consider. Besides, the longer John is mired in the grid-locked traffic of rush-hour, the better. Baker Street is eerily silent in a way that’s repressive.

The taxi driver isn’t a talkative bloke, surprisingly, and Watson is oddly glad for it. He feels exhausted, in part, no doubt, thanks to the pitiful attempts at sleep that he’s endured since that dizzying moment at St Bart’s. He rests his forehead against the cool damp of the window. The soft pitter-patter of raindrops is almost soothing, at least for a little while. 

He thinks of old Lit lessons, twenty-years behind him and only just relevant: it’s a pathetic fallacy, John decides. The increasingly torrential downpour marks the pang in his chest and the dismal state of his ever-whirling thoughts, sloshing and spinning like the tea he made for a phantom flat-mate that morning. He’s not inclined towards the shameless search for sympathy as others might be, but at that moment, he wants nothing but for someone to understand. 

But they don’t - how could they? He wasn’t their friend. He wasn’t their _partner_. He wasn’t the single point of gravity in their universe as he was in John’s: an iron anchor where all else had slipped away. It didn’t seem conceivable that even he had buckled beneath the pressure. 

It’s not often that John lets such thoughts wash uninhibitedly over him, but there’s a sense of anonymity in a taxi that lures him into something of a false sense of security. The city beyond the glass rushes past and John merely sits. He’s glad for the respite. 

He almost falls asleep sitting there in the traffic. A soothing piano trickles from the radio in front—he hadn’t taken the driver for a Classical FM fan, but- oh why does he bother doing this again?—and John begins to drift. It might be Beethoven. His knowledge of the classical isn’t schooled enough to discern between concertos, but it’s the type that’s achingly familiar enough to ensure it to be one of the two, or perhaps three, that he has direct knowledge of. 

In the space between John’s internal dash through men six feet under, it’s been replaced by another. He misses the introductory spiel by the presenter, but even in lieu of it, he knows this one. 

John knows the piano that ornaments the beginning, slow and soft. He knows the swell of violins and the woeful flute that presides over it all. He knows the tone, so melancholic and operatic and he even knows the scale in which it’s conducted. 

_F sharp minor, John; the only movement that Mozart composed in F sharp minor._

John knows, because it was his favourite. Sherlock’s favourite. He permits himself acknowledgement of the name, because by that point, it’s far too late. As the bright middle section fades back to the mournful crescendo (oh, how apt) and the trajectory is complete, his skin is peppered with goosebumps and his vision blurs with tears. 

John is a solider. Death doesn’t faze him as much as it does others, not when it had become such a staple of his life in Afghanistan. It certainly doesn’t warrant crying. He isn’t inclined towards hysterics; his grief is a wholly sober affair and yet:

He allows the tears to fall freely across his cheeks in the back of that taxi. Though John has never particularly liked the rain, he’s grateful for it now, each drop that streaked past the glass, because he can’t bear the indignity of a witness to his sudden divergence from character. 

Even in death, Sherlock had always had the knack for strong-arming John from his comfort zone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John is listening to Chris Moyles on Radio One and Chris Evans on Radio 2 in the morning. He finishes the day with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 (for reference, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf711o8jAQA is what inspired the latter part).
> 
> The title comes from Canto XXVII of Dante's Inferno. Expect to see an awful lot more of it.


	2. Limbo (1)

Dr. Patricia Glover of University College Hospital’s A&E had seen more than her fair share of oddities in her time in the profession. She’d witnessed hearts torn apart in their plenty, physically and otherwise, ravaged beyond repair. She’d observed her patients seemingly transcend all planes of logic and emerge from injuries, from consuming illnesses that ought to have rendered them catatonic at best. She’d replaced teeth, stitched up gaping wounds and tended to broken spirits in their droves. Her current project took the latter to the extreme.

It was perhaps a testament to how frankly bizarre the circumstances surrounding their newest recruit were that Glover even considered his presence an oddity. In the spirit of her job, she hadn’t batted an eyelid when the man had arrived for his first day of work. The traditional nurse’s uniform that had been distributed was accessorised with red-rimmed eyes (you didn’t have to be a detective to ascertain that tears had been falling) and a pale complexion that ordinarily prescribed a lack of sleep.

The latter wasn’t disconcerting, not by itself: medics were persistently rushed off their feet. The mountainous array of crumpled coffee cups and empty cans of Red Bull in the staff room was a testament to that. 

The interview, in and of itself, perhaps ought to have been something of a precursor:

“You were trained at Barts, spent ten years in the field as an army doctor - Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers...”

“Until I got shot, yes,” he had supplied. The casual hop to his tone had been chilling; as though requesting not one but two sugars in his tea. 

“Why this, then? A&E?”

“It keeps me on my toes.”

Reticence ordinarily hailed uncertainty. Glover could still recall with stunning clarity the divergence from her usual rule of thumb - and the surprising lack of any qualms about that. 

It was in his eyes, she decided. The moment the thought blundered into her mind and fluttered blindly around, like a moth, Glover was disdainful: had her co-workers been privy to the observation—rather, her reception to it: to the melancholy air of eyes that had seen far too much and to the bite that they took when she suspected that her questions had veered ever so slightly to the interfering. 

Glover reminded herself that it was merely a part of the job and pressed on. 

“What I meant to say is: we receive a lot of violent and aggressive patients on a daily basis, never mind the relatives. It’s awfully like a battlefield, in and of itself.”

At that point, John had fixed her with such a level stare that Glover felt compelled to look away. She steadied her own gaze.

“I’m not afraid to do battle. Not going to beat the living daylights out of them, either, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It hadn’t been, but Glover hadn’t pressed the matter and, four weeks on, it hadn’t reared its head again since.

“Alright... how would you categorise what order patients ought to be seen in?”

* * *

As it turned out, “battlefield” was an apt epithet indeed.

He’d only been employed there for a month. John’s first foray into the Big Bad World of the 9 to 5 had come in the form of yet another surgery (God, no, not Sarah’s), but he’d handed in his resignation after all but snoring through the second week. It was apparent that, without Sherlock to employ as a scapegoat (the only running John did nowadays was half an hour on the Wii Fit to work off Mrs Hudson’s care packages), he had little choice but to acknowledge that diagnosing the common cold was not in his wheelhouse. 

A&E was all of the adrenaline rush and fast-paced mechanisms that John had come to crave from war, but without the perpetual risk of being shot lingering like a noxious smell. That was, providing the hysterical family/friends/partner (delete as applicable, because there was always one) didn’t get their hands on a rifle. 

It didn’t escape his notice that the gunshot wounds were always directed his way. It didn’t particularly bother John--amused him more than anything--but he was grateful that his co-workers at least had the grace to look somewhat guilty about it. His night shift that heady July evening hadn’t been any different. 

John foolishly winds himself to the belief that surely, _surely_ , nothing else would transpire. It’s Monday and, while the department receive more than their fair share of drunken debacles, there isn’t quite the influx that another night might prescribe. 

They stumble in, of course. It’s London and a thriving student area to boot; there’s never any lack of them. A month into the job and John had already appropriated that there’s never a moment to catch one’s breath. The buggers come in with traffic cones as hats and their breath smelling of whatever horrendous spirits they’ve mixed to warrant this, their hot breath in John’s ear as he struggles to keep them upright.

No sooner has he sent one on their way, does another take their place. He’s beginning to suspect that their apparent impersonation of Hydra is a conspiracy.

“Watson! We’ve got a teenager with a gunshot wound to the head. He’s breathing, but barely. The bullet’s still lodged inside.”

Just an average night at the office, then.

“Gang violence?”

“Tried to stop a robbery at an off-licence.”

“Ah.”

John can still smell the beer around the boy, lingering in a pungent aura. He isn’t of the legal age yet; he looks barely sixteen, never mind eighteen. In a rare spurt of cynicism, he reflects that this ought to be the visual deterrent to underage drinking. 

John wonders if the beer had played any part in his begrudgingly surprising foray into heroics. He’s not a stranger to liquid courage himself. There’s something appealing to the warm blanket sensation that coils around one’s heart and mollifies the innermost fears: there’s something about feeling on top of the world and only coming down when someone pushes. It’s a sad state of affairs, John decides, that alcohol is necessary to ignite such a state in most of the public. 

But, irrespective of the circumstances, the boy sprawled upon the gurney isn’t really the victim of alcohol: no, he’s just another soul with a hidden heart of gold, with all of the best intentions, with visions of morality, who will suffer for it. John feels a pang at that. It reminds him of the soldiers he’s seen, writhing in agony in the field hospitals abroad, their bandages stained scarlet. 

The parallel is still running through his head when John leans to inspect the damage, of which there’s an awful lot. 

“It’s only a small-calibre bullet,” he announces. He isn’t entirely certain whether the relief is for the benefit of those around him or his own. “Missed the posterior cerebral artery by about a centimetre. No exit wound.”

The latter statement is somewhat redundant; they all know that the boy had a bit of lead stuck in his brain. It comforts John to dedicate words to a situation that ought not to have them: that this boy would suffer for his foray into the heroic is inexplicable to John. The teenager doesn’t deserve the efficient chaos that billows around him, but he’s here regardless and the man who’s currently taking his blood pressure isn’t at all happy about it.

It’s the blonde doctor who’s presiding over things that night, the one who interviewed him (Glover doesn’t usually work this shift, but she’s covering and John knows that she regrets it from persistent trail of her fingertips through her hair), and she gets the bullet out with the sort of dexterity that makes John’s gut pang for that pressure. It’s a ridiculous notion, he decides, but by that point, who is there to judge?

* * *

The boy pulls through. There’s some bleeding, but it’s contained for the moment, and there’s a collectively audible sigh of relief throughout the ward when his condition is declared stable. The exhaustion that rallies between the team is almost tangible.

Indeed, when John clocks out at 7AM, his very bones feel as though they’re comprised of lead. He wonders at the likelihood of their folding away beneath him entirely. It’s no doubt a novel occurrence, the spontaneous combustion of a man and his bones, but John doesn’t doubt the possibility. 

He’s grateful that the early morning rush has yet to percolate on the Tube; it means that when his train finally glides into the station after a five-minute wait that feels like hours, he can collapse into a seat that he doesn’t feel obliged to give up immediately afterwards. John 

After the _incident_ , he hasn’t spoken to any of them. In the early days, Lestrade made the effort--a friendly pint, that sort of thing--but Molly seemed prone to burst into tears whenever she laid eyes upon him and God knew that Mycroft wasn’t about to extend the hand of friendship. John hasn’t seen him since _before_ the incident. It gives him an odd sort of closure, however unpleasant; to sever them from his life as readily as if they’d meant nothing. 

Mrs Hudson evidently wasn’t going to lie down and let that happen, though. 

At first, she’d suggested Speedy’s as the site of their weekly coffee-and-catch-up, but John hadn’t been receptive to that in the slightest. There was a Starbucks on Baker Street, too, but he’s even more adverse to that. 

In the end, they settle upon an entirely inoffensive Costa somewhere in Islington. It’s a bit out of the way for the pair of them, but as much of a middle ground as either can manage without explicitly bringing up the topic. Mrs Hudson had made some noises about an old school-friend there, anyway, and well (John had said, just as he always does), that’s just fine. 

He’s meeting her now and, in spite of the fact his bones feel like dead weights and his eyelids are wont to fall shut at any given moment, John is the picture of amiability when he greets her with a hug inside. She remarks that he smells like hospitals, he comments on her new shade of lipstick (still doing her colours, even after Connie) and they both make a spectacular effort of pretending everything is just fine as they pick through lattes and carrot cake.

“John,” she implores, two minutes after the point that John anticipates it. He must be losing his touch. “You look awfully tired.”

“I’ve just come off the night-shift at the hospital. It’s alright.”

“No, I mean—not physically. I worry about you sometimes, holed up by yourself in that flat.”

“Well, it’s not through a lack of trying, Mrs. Hudson, believe me.”

“You always used to have a lady-friend over, not like—“ John gives her what can only be construed as a death glare and Mrs. Hudson recovers swiftly. “Not like now.”

“Nothing seems to click.”

She reaches over and pats his hand. “Promise me that you’ll look after yourself, dear.”

The way she says it, it feels like a goodbye. John bristles; he isn’t ready for another one. “I’m fine, Mrs. Hudson.”

“John,” she begins carefully, evidently mulling over her words. “John, it’s been three years.”

Oh, he should have seen that one coming. John doesn’t quite glare at her, but he fixes Mrs. Hudson with the sort of gaze meant to intimidate: to make her uncomfortable enough to warrant averting her gaze. Naturally, she does nothing of the sort. 

“It’s the past. _He’s_ the—“ 

“Don’t say it.”

“He’s the past. He’s gone.” 

“I _had_ noticed, thanks.”

“You need to let him go.”

“And you sound like my therapist.”

(That’s a lie, of course. His last encounter with a therapist—the fourth in a string of many—went like so: 

“"He's a wanker, that's what he is."

"Ah, we don't tend to use those sorts of terms in this sphere, Mr Watson."

"Tosser?" She shook her head. "Complete raving lunatic."

"Vexatious? Burdensome?"

"Selfish bastard."

She’d ended the session after that.)

Mrs. Hudson isn’t nearly as frustrating as the doctor had been, but it doesn’t take a lot to set John off nowadays.

“I only say it because it’s true, dear. You know where I am, if you need me. I’m not your housekeeper, but I am a friend.”

They part ways not long afterwards.

* * *

When John returns home, it isn’t to Baker Street. He hasn’t set foot there for a year, not since his contract ended. Its absence in his life is certainly therapeutic, to some extent, though occasionally, when he’s feeling particularly sadistic and just so happens to be travelling along the City line from St Pancras, he gets off at Baker Street Station. 

John stands on the platform as people migrate past him just long enough to feel the familiar, bitter feeling of resentment when the next train arrives and he relents. 

Today isn’t one of those days. The coffee is swilling around in his stomach still, the caffeine prompting illness rather than energy, and he just wants to get home. He wants to crawl into his bed and forget that the night never happened: that lad, with the bullet in his brain; Mrs Hudson and her imploring eyes; the perpetual, dull sensation of lead in his very core. 

It’s a direct hurtle up the Piccadilly line that takes him home (busier now; it’s rush hour and London has come out of the woodwork). It doesn’t take him more than ten minutes, but John, having spared a seat for an elderly gent, feels like a dead-man walking when he ascends from the pit of platforms at Manor House. He wonders at the technicalities of feeling asleep on the escalator.

The rapid vibration of his mobile in the pocket of his jeans jolts him out of the experiment.

“Bloody fuc--” John blurts, juggling his rucksack and the damn phone that shrieks in an embarrassingly loud rendition of the default Nokia ringtone. 

He stabs the green key with a small ounce of desperation. “M- Mrs. Hudson?” John left her all of fifteen minutes ago. His concern rushes to the worst conclusion. “What is it? I’m really, really tired, so--”

“ _John!_ Oh, John, you have to come quickly. I only left the house for an hour; it’s him, I’m sure of it.”

John’s blood runs cold. “Him” in this context is a pronoun that could prescribe anyone, but he (John, that is) knows better. He feels the hurried furl of panic in his stomach—he isn’t ready for this, he can’t go back—but he’s got Mrs. Hudson babbling in his ear about God only knows what and disgruntled wankers coming at him left, right and centre (alright, he is standing right in front of the escalator) and John just gives in.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Hudson, I’m on the way.”

* * *

It transpires that he doesn’t have to set foot inside 221B at all; the offending piece of evidence is glaring at him right from the doorway. Quite literally, in fact: the fluorescent smiley face spray-painted to the ebony door is obnoxious and incriminating to the highest degree.

It’s one of those bloody smiley faces, imprinted into the black wood just as its twin still is, two floors above: right down to the bullet-holes that describe its shape. John wagers that even the paint is precisely the same. It feels as though his gut has dropped right out from his stomach. Perhaps he isn’t meant to let go just yet after all. 

“John,” Mrs. Hudson says to him upon arrival, hooking her arm into his. “What on earth’s going on?”

“I was about to ask you the same question.” John glances darkly at the yellow depiction. 

There’s a horrendous chill racing down the back of his spine, but he’s not entirely certain whether it’s the presence of that infuriating face that can be blamed or merely that he stands in the shadow of 221B for the first time in twelve months. It doesn’t matter: John wants to leave; wants to hide himself away from what feels like the inevitable descent into mystery once more. He’s had enough of that to last a lifetime. 

“We should go to the police,” he adds, ignoring the skeptical look that Mrs. Hudson marks that suggestion with. With a final glance at the doorway, John finds himself scrolling through his contact list for a name that hasn’t been on his lips in months.


	3. Limbo (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I don’t believe in coincidences, Greg. That thing was on Mrs. Hudson’s door. I don’t care if it’s him or some sick git trying to mess with my head. I want you to get to the bottom of it.”_

“John, I don’t understand what you want me to do.”

“How about your job?”

“You know bloody well that that’s not my—“

“Not your division, I get it.”

“It’s not only that, is it? John, it’s a piece of graffiti. Chances are, it’s just some stupid kids, bored out of their heads over the summer.”

“With guns?”

“Well, this is London.”

“Bored kids with guns,” John repeats, fingertips scratching at his chin as though in mock thought. “Now, why does that sound familiar?”

“I know what you’re implying, but it’s been three years.” That’s starting to sound like a broken record. “Mate, you were there. It can’t be.”

“I never said it was.” John is growing quite indignant now, hackles up and fists clenched in a defiant sort of stance that’s growing to be quite characteristic. He glares. “I don’t believe in coincidences, Greg. That thing was on Mrs. Hudson’s door. I don’t care if it’s him or some sick git trying to mess with my head. I want you to get to the bottom of it.”

“John, my hands are tied. There’s nothing I can—“

Lestrade’s protests trip over the dull bang that emanates from beneath John’s palms as he slams them down onto the desk. 

The sequence is, by that point (that is to say three hours after the discovery of a certain piece of graffiti), old-hat and its predictability is no more comforting than it is anticipated. Evidently, John had forecasted for a far more obliging welcome than the one he received in lieu of it: Lestrade had buckled on his not-my-division armour the moment John had walked through the door.

He finds it terribly frustrating: that is, Lestrade’s reluctance to extend the hand of charity, or some other complete bollocks that one might wax lyrical over. John doesn’t care – can’t really summon the conviction to. He’s knackered and pissed off and Mrs. Hudson is sending sporadic texts (their spasmodic nature, he decides, is indicative of the fact that she doesn’t know what the bloody hell she’s doing). 

Truth be told, John still isn’t entirely certain what he’d been anticipating when he’d swept into Scotland Yard and deposited himself in front of Greg Lestrade’s desk. His was the first name that had sprung to mind following John’s frantic surge through people who might know what the hell to do in situations like these.

Well, that was a lie. The first, naturally, had been Mycroft. John had tidied that under the rug. Awkward didn’t even begin to cover that one.

It hadn’t been much of a step after that to find him in a taxi en route to Scotland Yard. John had chronicled the impending meeting with what he now recognised to be a bit of inadvisable optimism in the obligation of the police force.

Sherlock would have been ashamed. 

Ultimately, John elects to compensate his previous aberration by glaring at Lestrade with renewed vigour. His eyes blaze with anger out of his pallid face (good God, he needs sleep) and he says, in a tone laced with bitterness, “There’s nothing anybody can do, is there? There never is. There wasn’t then and there isn’t now.”

He’s not entirely certain where this outburst has come from; John’s spent so long shielding himself beneath a certain self-suppression that it blind-sides even him, never mind Lestrade, who’s regarding him very much as though he’s gone insane. 

“This isn’t my fault anymore than it is yours, John. I wish you’d stop bloody harping on at me.” It’s the first time since the incident that Lestrade has come even vaguely close to losing his patience with him and John is rendered suitably reticent in surprise. “After the incident—I texted you. We all did. You never replied. And now you come blundering in out of nowhere three years later with some cock and bull story about some graffiti—what are we supposed to think, John?”

Had he been any less miffed, John might have thumped him companionably on the shoulder and had a jibe at just how akin to an estranged lover Lestrade sounds right now – you never texted back. Alas, he’s caught in a repetitive cyclone of denial and he can do little but pin the copper with a glare usually reserved for the bus-drivers who can’t be bodged to wait the extra thirty seconds that it would take for John to hop on. 

The truth is, he isn’t entirely certain what his intentions were. Scotland Yard is fraught with so many memories of Sherlock and his bloody brilliant—albeit somewhat melodramatic—feats of logic that it’s burdensome to consider anything but.

John will never admit to that, though—will he hell as like—so he grabs his coat where it had been draped at the back of his chair. 

(He’d occupied it for approximately forty seconds, at which point the increasingly heated conversation had warranted a tactically more active stance.)

“Forget it. He was right about you lot.”

“John—“ The bite has evaporated from its brief habitat beneath Lestrade’s tone: he suspects that his own had chased it off. “John, mate, look. I’ll stop by later, yeah? I can’t make any promises, but this is a rotten bit of luck. I want to help out, you know I do.”

“I’ll see you later, Greg.”

…………………………………………………………………………..

Lestrade doesn’t put up much of a protest after that. He lets John leave, though not without a brisk clap on the back and a word of promise regarding the debatable meeting that’ll take place “later”. Whether that denotes the near future, John hasn’t the foggiest – nor is he particularly fussed at that point. There’s a bed in Hackney with his name on it and he hasn’t any intention of digressing from it.

Unfortunately, John has come to the conclusion that he must have done something to offend the universe, because, if the atrocious rate that his morning was putting up was anything to go by, it quite certainly had it in for him. 

No sooner had John shut Lestrade’s door behind him did a soft body collide with his chest, juxtaposed with an entirely unladylike grunt. 

“Bugger.” 

It’s Molly. Even after she disentangles herself from John’s hands, which grasp her shoulders in an effort to steady her, the aseptic smell that’s evidently followed her even all the way from the morgue at Bart’s winds itself around the pair of them. Bitterly, John reflects that he doesn’t understand how she can set foot in the vicinity. 

Her cheeks are tinged that characteristic shade of pink that Molly Hooper is known for: she seems to John to be forever flustered, but it’s more noticeable today. For a brief, dizzying moment, he wonders whether she too has fallen victim to this phantom ASBO (the epithet is a touch of his previous flair for captivating, certainly in his titles). The suspicion is fractured just a stilted moment later.

“John! Oh, John, I’m terribly sorry—I was in a rush to see Greg, it’s—well, I don’t suppose confidentiality is really—there’s a body, see, and he asked me to—“

Molly stutters to a halt as John brandishes his palm. “I’ve had enough murder investigations to last me a lifetime.”

That’s not quite true and she probably knows it. See, John has never quite foregone the juvenile hope that the git would march into his living room and demand his assistance on a case. He knows that it’s ridiculous—he wouldn’t have wasted his breath when a text would have been adequate—but does he really give a damn? Gone are the days when John would have the BBC news humming in the background; it had provided a persistent taunt that, in Sherlock’s absence, murders went unsolved and the world had been shook from its axis. 

“You’re right,” Molly concedes regardless, her shoulders deflating in a visible sigh. “Gosh, I’m sorry. This is absolutely awful – horrid timing, too. What with—“ She blinks. 

Ah, John thinks. Ah, she’s heard it all. 

The poor woman looks horrendously flustered and John knows in a heartbeat that she’s witnessed the whole bloody thing. He realises with no small amount of shame that he’d been anticipating a familiar rush of anger in his gut—it’s bloody rotten that the frequency of its appearance was the only factor in his expectations—and its absence is startling. 

“How long have you been here?” John finally manages, quirking a brow. 

The question procures the desired reaction: Molly quails. “Oh, you know, not that long… Traffic was a bloody pain and we’ve been inundated at Bart’s—“

“Molly.”

“—you know, what with everything and our new interns and all sorts, really, God knows what it’ll be like come September when the students come back. I’ve barely time to eat lunch, let alone traipse through Westminster. It’s only a few minutes, but you know what the roads are like and—“

“Molly!” John doesn’t quite physically shake her from the unmitigated splurge of data, but he’s convinced that it wouldn’t have been such a strain to consider how close he is. “Molly, it’s fine.”

Because he knows. One doesn’t have to be a consulting detective (impossibly, anyway: the only one in the bloody world is arguably lying six feet under) to deduce that she’s flustered: Molly is just a beat too quick to have her spiel pass for coherence and those cheeks of hers are stained almost scarlet as opposed to the usual dappled pink.

John knows that Molly knows and the diverted gaze that his own is met with seals the deal. 

“I couldn’t help but overhear. It’s awful: poor Mrs. Hudson, poor—“ She hesitates. Clever girl, John reflects. “Poor thing. Fancy having that sort of thing on your doorstep! Makes you wonder, though, who’d do something like that. Other than— well, you know, but that would be daft. Not that he would, obviously, but—“

Molly is off again and John is beginning to wonder whether this prolific case of word-vomit is contagious. 

“Of course you wouldn’t,” he feels obligated to point out. “He can’t, can he?” 

She blinks. “No, of course not. Impossible.”

“Can he, Molly?”

“No, no, precisely. It’s still ever so daft, though; I hope you manage to find out who did it. It’s bloody awful – someone needs to be accounted for.”

John’s thoughts have been stewing on precisely the same theory since that obnoxious yellow paint had burned into his retinas that very morning.

……………………………………………………………………..

Somewhere between Molly’s endless blathering and John’s fiendish exploration of what he’s convinced is a guilty conscience, the latter posits that they meet for a coffee. 

She was still on call and he’d been desperate for forty-winks, so, six hours after the discovery of that damn smiley face (and none the wiser), they migrate from their separate ends of London to a little old place near her flat that boasts the close-knit community of a local business. John is reminded with a pang of Speedy’s and he wonders briefly if they still know his usual with nothing more than a glance at his entrance.

Molly is stirring idly at a low-fat cappuccino that’s had its already minimally depleted calories severely compromised by the generous sprinkling of chocolate. Desperately needing the sugar, John sips at his hot chocolate with the observation that this is painfully awkward. 

“You’re at UCL, then?” Molly finally ventures, saving John a job and a half. 

“Yeah, A&E. It pays the bills.”

“You know, you would always have been welcome back at Barts. We were surprised when we never heard from you.”

John can’t imagine why; surely it’s the most common thread that the grieving man can attach to – avoidance. He shoots her a sceptical look over the rim of his mug. 

“After what happened there? You’re off your rocker, Mol. I don’t think I could bring myself to come back.”

She hesitates. “It was hard for me, too. For a while, all I could see was—oh, John, you’ve no idea how awful it was.”

One brow is still raised and it quirks to an almost impossible level at the statement. John is half-inclined to admonish her for it—of course he knows how bloody horrid the entire debacle was and continues to be—but, frankly, the last thing he intends to do is cause a scene in this homely little place.

In the stead of his increasingly explosive temper, John sighs. “I know. It was godawful. The last thing I said to him—“

He catches himself. He hasn’t progressed that far with any of his psychiatrists, God no, and John isn’t entirely convinced that he wants to do so here, with his palms pressed to the sticky table and a jovial trio of builders to his immediate left leering at Page 3 girls. 

Molly, on the other hand, is unperturbed. 

“We were in the lab,” she states and John feels the heady rush that he hasn’t experienced in years: the first inclination that the loose threads are beginning to retie themselves. “It was just before he— well, before he went up there, I suppose. He told me— he reckoned that he was going to die.”

John’s blood runs cold at that. It’s not merely the verbal confirmation that Sherlock had intended for it to happen all along—he’d planned for it, at any rate—but the brisk evisceration of the ignited hope that he’d foolishly permitted to burn in the pit of his stomach. Molly’s eyes well with tears and John feels horridly awkward, because here is the raw emotion that he’s striven so tirelessly to quell. Worse still, he feels rotten for having ever suspected that she, little Molly Hooper, would have had anything to do with that selfish bastard and his disappearing act.

Pursing his lips, John reaches out with a tentative hand and pats her forearm. “It’s alright.”

Those two words of solace are all that he can manage to summon for the time being. Their conversation rapidly peters away into a subject of far less repugnant proportions: over two more rounds of coffees, they work their way through the arguably mundane essence of life in the City. John persistently wrestles with his own contrition at his conduct; Molly seems to be so unbearably sad as she choreographs her life for him that it feels inconceivable to him that he might have acted so horrendously. 

……………………………………………………………….

It’s growing dark when they finally part and the dull weight of regret still exerts its pressure upon John’s gut. The tight squeeze that Molly bestows upon him is indicative of no hard feelings, indeed, but it doesn’t waylay the sense that he’s grossly mistreated all of them, Lestrade included. Perhaps, John muses wryly, he does indeed owe the man an apology. 

Out comes his phone and his thumb is poised over the buttons to awaken it from sleep mode when the bloody thing buzzes to life on its own accord, startling John with a tinny rendition of Sweet Child O’ Mine. He feels his heart might stop entirely when Lestrade’s name flashes boldly from the screen.

“H-hello?” John somehow manages, once he’s summoned the gall to answer. He’s convinced that this isn’t a coincidence. 

“Before you say anything: I’m sorry. Alright? There’s been another one.”

John doesn’t have to ask what the bloody heck he’s on about; he’s already hailing a taxi. “Where is it this time?”


	4. Limbo (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You’re also a solider, John. Soldiers don’t believe in miracles.”_
> 
> _“I believed in Sherlock.”_
> 
> _“What’s the difference?"_

Lassitude: that’s what John feels when the taxi pulls into the car park at Tesco. It’s a creeping fatigue that weighs down his bones and bleeds though to his core, because, even before he’s exited the vehicle, the bright yellow paint adorning the Ford in the distance invades his peripheral vision. 

He tries not to look at it, not properly, because it’s as though staring right at that infernal smiling face (its audacity to appropriate such felicity is infuriating, really) conjures all manner of atrocities. Rather, John focuses on the dejected slump of Lestrade’s shoulders, a concave dip that screams hopelessness the closer he gets, and it’s all he can do not to announce a petulant “I told you so” when he draws to a halt beside Greg. 

“That’s going to cost you,” John settles upon instead, surveying the damage to the windscreen with a tactically grim expression. 

A dejected rasp of air escapes through Lestrade’s nostrils and he trails a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. John can sympathise. He knows precisely what it’s like to have the ground hurled away from beneath his feet: to merely stare as all that he’d come to know comes crashing (in his case, quite literally) down before him. He’d always thought that Greg had possessed a quiet optimism that was startling in a police inspector—an insistence that all will be “alright on the night”—and this- this is the evidence of his upheaval.

“I was in there for half an hour at most,” Lestrade groans, kicking at his plastic bags as though they possessed the proof of his short absence. A pint of milk falls over in protest. “How is this even possible?”

John deals a cursory glance around the asphalt. “It’s not exactly busy, is it?”

“Don’t they have bloody CCTV in this place? I bet those cameras don’t work,” Lestrade blathers on regardless, expression contorted into indignation. “How am I even supposed to get this home? What a state that would be, Inspector sodding Lestrade broadcasting the work of a mindless hooligan…” 

Arching an eyebrow, John muses that this is a stark contrast to the undertones of panic that he’d picked up from that brief phone-call not twenty minutes ago, but then again, the poor git’s had almost an hour’s worth of overly curious glances to fend off. Frankly, John reflects, he’d be a bit snarky, too.

“You were in there for half an hour and you’re putting this down to “mindless hooliganism”.”

“Well, it’s better than the alternative.”

“Which is?” John demands and feels delightfully content at the show of fidgeting that Lestrade replies with.

“I hadn’t thought of that yet.”

“Don’t fib, Greg.”

The minor tantrum that follows isn’t quite the spitting and frothing and foot-stamping extravaganza that Sherlock could have boasted, but it’s impressive nonetheless, particularly when one considers that this is Inspector Lestrade: a man who had long since subjected himself to the unfortunate fact that the success of his career revolves around a so-called amateur.

“What the bloody hell am I supposed to think, John? You came marching into my office with stories of lunatics with guns and Sherlock bloody Holmes and whether he really did snuff it and then this happens.” 

John’s not entirely certain whether it’s the utterly indelicate evaluation of Sherlock’s debatably lifeless status that does it, or merely the exasperation that comes with the revelation that a quiet life in A&E was apparently never on the cards of one Dr J. Watson. Whatever it is, he’s miffed. 

“I wouldn’t go there, if I were you.” John tries to go for guttural and deadly, but frankly, he comes across a little jilted. Fortunately, the flush of his cheeks can pass for rage. 

“You said it yourself,” Lestrade continues, pinning him with a gaze that’s horribly disconcerting. “Or tried. It makes every bit of sense.”

It doesn’t and that’s the worst part. Every fibre of his being wants it to be true: John’s soul is desperate for something to cling to – a hope that’s perhaps in vain, but doesn’t dwindle as the days had turned to weeks and more. He recalls Sherlock’s voice in sonorous clarity: _when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth._

John can distinctly remember how absurd he found the statement initially - it was precisely the sort flashy bollocks that he liked to come out with. Yet, just as it doesn’t escape his notice that the memory of him isn’t as painful as it once was (his visits to that damn therapist were sporadic now, borderline non-existent), John is entirely aware that his stance on the mantra has changed. He wants so desperately for it apply, not out of any real intention of solving this damn annoying mystery, but because, surely to God, the only conceivable manner of its conception would be from the man himself.

But he’s got his hopes up far too many times to actively consider it as a possibility—tall, brooding gits with curly hair on the other side of the road, mainly—so John won’t humour Greg with the admittance. He’s not daft, no matter how much certain people would have liked to believe it. Men don’t fall from buildings and just turn up three years later to cause a little mayhem. 

“Maybe you were right,” John manages now, glancing at Lestrade. “It’s impossible. It’s couldn’t be.”

“What if it is?”

“It isn’t,” he insists and he’s shouting now: fists clenched and veering so close to swinging forward. “It’s ruddy well impossible and I want sod all to do with it, alright?”

Lestrade sighs. “Mate, come on—“

“No, Greg. I was doing alright because this lot all kicked off.” John’s given a skeptical look for that, one that makes him bristle. “Well, I was getting there, alright? Then this bloody—I don’t give a toss, Greg. I couldn’t give a monkey’s right buttock about it.” 

…………………………………………………………………..

That had been a complete and utter lie, of course. John spends the taxi ride home in a persistent state of fretting, if the state of his lower lip is anything to go by, but he’s a stubborn git (proud, too) and he won’t return to that Tesco if the rest of bloody London had ran out of milk. 

No amount of cajoleries would have him admit that, however. John is still silently seething—more at his own chronic lack of luck, really, but the anger feels good and he isn’t going to banish it—when he lets himself into his poky little flat an hour later. He potters inside, humming under his breath in an apparent attempt to rally some kind of optimism, and entirely bypasses the tall figure sitting in his favourite armchair until the git announces with an utter lack of shame that he’d jolly well like a cuppa, too.

“Jesus!” 

“I’d no idea you thought so highly of me, John.”

“How the hell did you get in here?”

“Of all the questions to be asking, I’d wager that to be amongst the least pressing, wouldn’t you?”

John narrows his eyes. “Um, no. No, not really.” He fires a suspicious glance over his shoulder at the front door; without any sign of a forced entry, the scope of its betrayal rather speaks for itself. “I’d think it’s perfectly plausible to get your knickers in a twist to find someone’s broken into your flat like he’s just wandered into a coffee morning.”

The little sod doesn’t reply to that – just arches his brows as though he couldn’t care less. Probably couldn’t, John reflects, because, frankly, normal Human Things had apparently never struck him as the sort of thing that one might want to conform to. 

John orbits him in an awkward silence for a moment. 

“Mycroft,” he finally states, eyeing the British Government as though he’d sprouted tentacles. 

“John.”

“Well, I’d tell you to make yourself at home, but—“

“That ship has already sailed, indeed. Take a seat.”

A man any less seasoned in the habits of the Holmes brothers might have remarked at the absurdity of being offered a seat in his own flat, but this is, after all, Mycroft. It’s a testament to his extended exposure to the inevitable peculiarity to anyone named Holmes that John didn’t rugger-tackle him to the ground upon the sight of an apparent intruder.

So John sits, folding himself awkwardly against the arm of the sofa opposite Mycroft, and they regard one another in silence for a moment. It’s not long before the former shatters the absence of noise. 

“So, there’s another one of those faces on my wall.”

He hadn’t noticed it at first, likely because the shock of seeing Mycroft after a three-year absence had rendered his senses blind to much else, but there it sits, painted above the telly as plain as the light of day that its bathed in. John considers its proximity to Mycroft

“Naturally.”

“It was— it was you?”

“Not quite.”

John hesitates. “Sherlock?”

“Somehow I doubt that my brother has mastered the art of astral projection from beyond the grave. You know very well that it hasn’t been disturbed; you visit almost daily.”

Scowling, John brushes past the inarguable revelation that Mycroft has indeed kept his tabs on him even after all this time. It’s a minor conundrum, quite frankly, amidst the sea of complexities that these bloody faces have strong-armed into his life. For three whole bloody years, he’d existed in a state of not-quite-blissful, but certainly welcome obscurity: no one gives a toss about the World’s Most Fraudulent (Late) Detective’s sidekick. Well, John reflects, he was either sorely mistaken or he’s been lumbered with the worst case of bad luck this side of the twenty-first century. 

Neither of those conclusions seems particularly apt in the light of recent developments: i.e. that Mycroft Holmes still has absolutely no idea about farcical developments like “personal space”. In a latent spurt of optimism, John clings to the hope of the latter—that, really, he’s just chronically mired in misfortune–but is struck with the discomfort of something far more concerning.

“Stranger things have happened,” he grinds out. “You know what he was like.”

“You were there. You saw what happened – you checked yourself. You’re a doctor.”

John doesn’t bother to even question how on earth Mycroft knows – how he’s privy to such things that not even John can recall particularly well. It had been a blur of incompetent onlookers and bloody, snow-white features that rushes back to him now in an unmitigated lurch of old wounds reopening. 

“Well, no,” John stammers, averting his gaze. “He shouldn’t be, but—“

“You’re also a solider, John. Soldiers don’t believe in miracles.”

“I believed in Sherlock.”

“What’s the difference?”

John doesn’t quite know what to say to that. 

………………………………………………………..……………………

It’s made apparent from the rest of the conversation—between Mycroft’s atypical reticence, that is—that John has been (and will continue to be, of all the bloody cheek) under close tabs from an unidentified (but certainly under Mycroft’s instruction) source. He reflects that it’s a pretty sad state of affairs that it doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it ought to. 

No, more perturbing is that Mycroft doesn’t stay long after that—after single-handedly shredding John’s hopes without so much as an ounce of remorse—and that sudden absence of everything but the stupid smiley face emblazoned on his wall is disorientating. John stands for a moment in the dappled light of the afternoon and simply breathes. He dedicates an arguably unnecessary pool of attention to the rasp of his breath in his throat. He knows the complexities of it and shouldn’t need to wonder, but John does, because it doesn’t seem in the least bit natural that his exists and Sherlock’s doesn’t. 

Mycroft’s revelation of his expansive knowledge of his habitual graveyard visitations was equally as rattling: not long after the man’s departure, John escapes precisely there in an effort to quell his racing thoughts. It had become as much an avenue of release as, say, knocking a few pints back at the pub; it wasn’t quite John’s happy place, but there was something placating in the loneliness there, in the wake of Sherlock’s grave.

When John arrives, there’s a cluster of flowers propped up against the ebony stone. They’ve been there since last Tuesday—John knows, because he visited the site every day but one last week—and consequently the lilies look more than a little worse for wear. He won’t remove them – never does. It’s Mrs. Hudson who brings them, when she can, and the rotating presence of these flowers reassures John that he isn’t alone in mourning. Though he appreciates the physical solitude, it’s comforting to note that appreciation for the Great Detective still lingers after death.

He stares blankly at those two words—at _Sherlock Holmes_ —and it feels very much as though his heart has plummeted past his intestines. 

“You complete and utter bastard.”


	5. Virgil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Lestrade has seen more than his fair share of corpses, but it doesn’t prohibit the disorientating swoop of nausea in the pit of his stomach that comes with the revelation that, dear Christ, there’s a young girl in his boot: a young girl who is very dead, indeed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone develops a horrendous potty mouth and things get a Bit Not Good. I suppose this marks the end of my inadvertently extended prologue: we'll actually make it to the next circle of hell after this. Promise.

“What do you mean, this isn’t covered by insurance? I didn’t spray paint the bloody thing myself, did I?”

In a turn of events that had apparently become characteristic of those affiliated with Scotland Yard, Greg Lestrade is arguably enjoying the most spectacular of tantrums with his own mobile phone. Well, more specifically, rather, the daft woman on the other end of the line: a decrepit old bat by the sounds of it. His marginally insulting accusation of that most irritating breed of Call Centre Denizens is entirely justified, quite frankly, not least because he’s starting to garner quite the audience and so help him, he’ll give that lot something to wag their tongues about.

Greg’s still there with Tesco presiding over his misery-- hasn't moved from that precise spot since John stormed off after their little tiff. He's dejected and a bit depressed: Greg can't for the life of him discern how he's supposed to work himself out of this bloody hole.

The car park is getting busier: it's filling with business types and kids finishing school and none of them have anything better to do than to snicker at the misfortune that's befallen the grey-haired man and his otherwise inoffensive car. Only the recognition that he is in fact supposed to be an admirable member of society prohibits Greg from flipping the bird at them. 

It’s a close call; they’re so unbearably annoying, veering closer to the car in their pilgrimage from their own vehicles to the supermarket in an attempt to fully gauge the situation. They’re like vultures, or so Lestrade had always imagined, but he’s never really been able to appreciate the scope of the irritation first-hand before. 

He pitches his head to the sky and sighs. He knows that, sooner rather than later, he’s going to have to move. The milk is no doubt growing warm and, frankly, the longer he stands there; the more chance he’s got of this ruddy lot catching wind that something isn’t quite right. 

Lestrade gathers his things, juggling his plastic bags as he rummages for his car keys. As he circles the car to get to the boot, he stoically ignores the probing glances that a young family tosses his way and concentrates on opening it up to stow his groceries away.

The boot swings open with a susurrus of displace air and Greg promptly drops his shopping. 

_"Shit."_

There's a body. A girl, to be precise, no more than eighteen he'd wager, and this is so very Not Good. Lestrade has seen more than his fair share of corpses—one doesn’t spend such an extended stay in the police force without it—but it doesn’t prohibit the disorientating swoop of nausea in the pit of his stomach that comes with the revelation that, dear Christ, there’s a young girl in his boot: a young girl who is very dead, indeed. 

At his feet, the bottle of milk has been torn against the asphalt and the liquid pools beneath his soles. It doesn’t faze him: far more concerning is the lifeless figure stuffed unceremoniously into the back of his car and the fact that he is very much going to write off the Ford now. As if he’s going to be driving _that_ around. 

Greg groans. "You have got to be kidding me."

………………………………………………………………………………

Curiously enough, those precise words tumble in disbelief from John's lips where he stands several miles away. He, too, has remained stationary for a pregnant moment, though his statement is more the catalyst for an entire world of confusion as opposed to the conclusion. 

There aren’t often very many people in the graveyard when John comes to visit. He isn’t entirely certain whether it’s a conscious decision on his part that sees him tracing the familiar path to Sherlock’s grave at a time when the vicinity is most definitely deserted, but, whether happy accident or not, John had grown accustomed to the absence of company. 

Even without the fucking Belstaff to confirm the presence of a man who ought to be dead, then, the sight of a figure at _his_ grave is disconcerting. 

The breath hitches in John’s throat for a single, dizzying moment and he imagines that he might faint there and then. Such an amalgamation of emotion flings itself to the forefront of his consciousness that he wagers doing so would have been a welcome respite from the confusion. It’s that which is most predominant, flanked ever so closely by concern for his mental well-being, because to see Sherlock Holmes standing tall at the foot of his own grave is certainly indicative of a chap going a bit ‘round the bend. 

He’d swiveled around at the sound of John’s startled statement, expression occupying his own impression of the closest a Holmes could get to surprise. Neither of them makes a move.

“You’re fucking joking,” John reiterates, once he’s garnered some small semblance of control over the hysterics that were so awfully close to brimming over the surface. “This is a piss-take. _This is not happening._ ”

“John—“ Sherlock begins and, yes, Jesus, it’s him, very much so, because who else would say his name with that ridiculous baritone of his. “John, allow me to explain—“

“I hope you’re going to do a lot more than bloody _explain_ why you’ve turned up after three years without so much as a sodding scratch. You _colossal_ twat, you—“

Sherlock opens his mouth to say something, naturally, and John can almost see the words forming right there on the tip of his tongue. It takes until the preliminary breath that preceded Sherlock's usual spiel for him to think _to hell with it_ and catch those ridiculously pink and very much alive cheekbones with his knuckles, coiled into a fist.

Sherlock's eyes widen in an almost comical surprise. The force of the right hook, not unlike the first and last time John had punched him, sends him sprawling, only this time they don't have the luxury of a wide expanse of cobbles to offer a clean fall. He spins back and stumbles and catches the corner of his head on his own damn gravestone.

John gawks for a second. No, no, this isn't happening. Because Sherlock was definitely alive not five seconds ago (the satisfying crunch of his nose beneath John's fist decreed it to be unremittingly true) and no, he can't have taken that away from him. 

He stares at the entangled pile of long, skinny limbs in the dirt and doesn’t breathe again until it spares a muffled groan, seemingly slotting himself back together as he struggles to his feet. 

"You complete arsehole."

"So, battering me on my own grave wasn't enough, was it? There's verbal abuse, too?"

"You absolute fucking prick."

"Oh, I am in luck today."

John's legs finally seem to give way beneath him after that and he has little choice but to grapple at the grave-- _Sherlock's_ , for crying out loud--in an effort to support himself. He wills himself not to faint, because, God, how embarrassing would that be. Said hopes were clearly in vain. 

Sherlock catches him awkwardly, long fingers curling beneath an armpit, and he hoists John upright with some difficulty. The atypically helpful nature is compromised heavily by the revelation that being touched a man that ought to be long dead is far more disconcerting than twatting the little bugger around the face. 

"I understand that this may come as a bit of a shock to you, but—"

"A bit of a shock?" John shouts, not really giving a damn at the hysterical show he's displaying. "A bit of a bloody—"

He takes another swing at Sherlock, but the other man had evidently been anticipating another crack at his face, because this time he steps cleanly out of the way, allowing John to blunder forwards. 

"Tesco's running out of milk is a bit of shock. Tripping up the stairs - definitely falls under that category. Finding your brother in my damn living room might even constitute a bit of a sodding shock. That doesn’t even begin to cover this.”

"My brother— Dear God, I told him not to bother you. I don’t know why I bother opening my mouth sometimes.”

"You mean, he knew as well?" John demands, all but frothing. “Who else? Mrs. Hudson? Lestrade? The Daily bloody Mail?”

Sherlock waves his arm disparagingly. “Don’t be ridiculous, John, you know they’d have a field day with that. All of them— I kept them all in the dark, because I had to. You have to understand.” 

“Sherlock, what— Why—“ John struggles to form a coherent sentence and, credit where it’s due, Sherlock waits surprisingly patiently for him to gather his jaw from where had deposited itself on the ground. He tries again: “What on earth possessed you to think that _dying_ was the answer? _You fell off the fucking roof._ I watched you! I— I took your pulse, for Christ’s sake, oh my God…”

“For all your anger, John, I find it interesting that you don’t blame me.”

“What? I don’t—what?” His voice is growing rather high-pitched with hysteria, now, because John isn’t entirely sure how Sherlock gets off on pigeon-holing him with such an accusation, but it’s bloody obscene. “You can’t be serious. I gave you a bruise the size of fucking Southwark on the side of your face and _I don’t blame you?”_

“Well, yes, I gathered that this would come as a bit of a vexation to you—“

“I’m fucking fuming.” 

“But your word choice, John,” Sherlock continues in a way that might have been admirable, had John not been caught in the midst of a horrendous battle with his own self-control (life would have been so much sodding easier if he could just punch the sod again and be done with it). “You said I fell. You didn’t say, “jump”. Obviously, one can deduce from that—“

John gives what can only be discerned as some kind of strangled battle-cry at that and fairly flings himself at Sherlock in a manner that, surprisingly, isn’t that foreign to the pair of them. Granted, he hadn’t outright asked for it this time, but, again, John maintained that the git’s subtext spoke far louder than any half-arsed attempt at a disguise.

_Oh, I’ll give you traumatised bloody vicar, Holmes._

“John!” Sherlock squawks, batting ineffectually at his fists. They’re clasped at his lapels and John shakes him with a startling vigour. “Get off me, you bloody great brute! I’m fragile! I’ve just come back from the dead!”

John renews his efforts at that. 

“Dead, my sodding arse!” He shifts the focus from Sherlock’s coat to his neck and shakes. “You weren’t dead, you sod!”

“I was resting?”

“Not even Python will save you now, you daft git, not even—“

His attempts at throttling Sherlock are thwarted by his phone buzzing where it lies pressed their thighs. Even Sherlock looks a bit beguiled.

“John, again, while I’m flattered that you should consider me in such a light, I have my reservations concerning the inappropriateness of a graveyard featuring in such activities and—“

“No, you idiot!” John sits back, still pinning him into place with his knees, and rummages with some difficulty for his shrieking phone. The caller ID almost makes his heart stop. “Lestrade. It’s Lestrade, _shit_. Sherlock, things have been— everything isn’t okay. The shit’s hit the fan, alright?”

“I know,” Sherlock says solemnly, pursing his lips. “Why do you think I chose to come back now?”

“I dunno, thought maybe you’d fancy a chat over tea and biscuits. It’s been a while; there’s a lot to catch up on.”

“And yet you’d rather batter me half to death in a graveyard.”

“Touché.”

John can’t help it: Sherlock looks ridiculous below him, sprawled out across the wilting grass and there’s dirt in his hair and a bruise blossoming in the hollow of his cheekbone. There’s still that hysteria, too; the funny flop of disbelief in his stomach that Sherlock is indeed tangible and his movements aren’t procured from a phantom. John dissolves into giggles. 

Sherlock, helpfully, looks concerned. 

“You’ve stopped going to your therapist.”

“Oh, yeah? Deduce that, did you?”

“Well, you do seem to have gone a bit ‘round the bend.” John pins him with a glower; Sherlock flinches and continues in a rush: “No, Mycroft told me.”

Clambering to his feet with some difficulty, John groans. “Of course he bloody did. Did he also tell you I replaced you with a dog?”

“What?” As he struggles to his own feet, using the grave with his own bloody name on it as leverage, Sherlock looks rather put out. “A _dog_? Talk about trying to soak up the ocean with a bloody sponge.”

“Are you seriously implying that I sobbed out the Atlantic ocean while you were off doing God knows what?”

Sherlock gives a wry grin. “You’re the one who tried to replace me with a dog, John.” 

The good Doctor gives him another shove for good measure. 

………………………………………………………………………………

They take the cab and for good reason: somehow, in the brief interim of their inexorable bickering, Sherlock lets slip that it still isn’t safe. He insists that pitching himself off a bloody roof wasn’t all for naught, though John has an initially hard time believing it. Indeed, when they pull into the Tesco car park that Watson had only vacated little more than an hour ago, he has every reason to retain his reservations. 

In the space of about half an hour, it’s degenerated into a battle-zone. What had once been half-filled with cars is eerily empty—the supermarket itself in the distance is awash in the creeping darkness of the approaching evening—save for a handful of apparent witnesses and the fluorescent tape that designated the crime scene – the tiniest slither of asphalt still occupied by Lestrade’s car. 

The man himself is having bloody kittens: that much John can tell even from their current distance. Greg remains oblivious to the revelation that one has become two as he paces relentlessly; only when John clears his throat to gain access to the scene does he look up. When he does, the stricken look on his features might well have been comical, were it not for the fact that John himself had worn it not long beforehand. 

“Oh, my _God_ , what fresh Hell is this?” 

“Nice to see you, too, Lestrade.” 

Greg’s disbelief is buoyed rather than waylaid when Sherlock speaks. “John, when I said that it was an emergency, it wasn’t an invitation to try and top it with— whatever this is.” 

“He followed me here, I swear. He’d still be writhing around on his bloody grave if I had anything to do with it.” 

“Nonsense, John, you’d never have afforded the cab here if I hadn’t chipped in.”

“You gave me ten bob.” 

“Which was 50p that you didn’t have.” 

“Yes, alright, ladies,” Greg interrupts, tugging at the pitiful remains of his salt-and-pepper hair. “Frankly, I don’t want to know how you’re standing here right now: there’s a body in the boot of my bloody car and I want to know why the hell she’s in there.”

“She,” Sherlock repeats. His eyes flick to the boot in question: it’s still hanging open from where Lestrade had evidently flung it prior to making the discovery. “May I?”

“Be my guest.”

Half an hour after returning to the land of the living, the World’s Only Consulting Detective is back in business. Trotting after him, John wonders if he ever really ceased.


End file.
